Announcements

Tonight we’re joined by Freelance Writer Steve Townshend to talk to him about all of his recent projects – including Pathfinder Ultimate Campaign, Steamscapes, 13th Age Bestiary, and Owlbear Run. Also, one of our fellow portallers has released a book that was created from a world he started right here on Obsidian Portal! So be sure to check out G. Derek Adams’s Spell/Sword!

Today’s episode is slightly longer than normal (40 min) and I apologize for going over our usual length.

Topics

Photo credit: Greg Inda

Ultimate Campaign, Steamscapes, 13th Age Bestiary

Steve and I discuss his recent writing projects and what they are all about, they include the Pathfinder Ultimate Campaign book, Steamscapes for Savage Worlds, and the upcoming 13th Age Bestiary. We also talk about his most recent D&D adventure “Owlbear Run“, which sounds like it’s quite a blast. All of these things have one thing in common too – lots of focus on roleplaying!

How Can We Make Published Adventures More Readable?

Our second topic is one relating to a blog post that’s yet to be published but I figured it would be a good topic to discuss with someone who writes them for a living. Steve and I discuss the flow of information in published adventures and how we could possibly improve them. Have you got any suggestions or great examples? Tell us!

Tip Corner

Steve gives us a great tip about how to run combat using theater of the mind successfully, in hopes of avoiding all those debates of “no I was standing over there!” when minis aren’t being used at the table.

Twitter Poll

@Bagheer asks: When you fail at the delivery of the opening of the game or session what do you do to recover?

Hi guys! Thanks for a very enjoyable podcast. Steve is one of my heroes – one of the guys that I am so thankful to have in the industry. Always great to hear his thoughts, learn from his wisdom, and read/play/DM his work!

On the subject of adventure communication, it is a really hard thing to do well. If the room/encounter/scene is simple and open, it isn’t too hard. As soon as we add complexity (and I LOVE complexity), we have problems around organization, format, and flow. A good question would be how to rewrite room 42 in 4E’s Tamoachan. How would you do it? Bear with me as I consider the issue…

I think we could first separate out the mirror portion, as that hallway can be a different room number. Within the actual room, probably the simplest issue to is to have a diagram of the route to be taken. We basically have to trace our finger on the map to figure it out, so a diagram would help. This does increase the space eaten up by the encounter.

I could also see pulling Features of the Room to earlier, but we run into consistency issues. These adventures use fewer headings to save space, though in organized play we would have more subheaders to divide the info. But, I could also argue that the blood is superfluous, in that this is supposed to be a test of knowledge (does a player know the meaning of ‘sinister’ as ‘left’).

And maybe the key here is that this is a disappointing old school riddle/puzzle, where the players are likely to be frustrated anyway. The “where the mask stares” is arguable, so I think I end up here: This encounter is okay, but like any adventure it needs to be read through once before running. In doing so, I would probably replace the riddle with something else (search the internet for a quick riddle, etc.) or plan on giving hints. I might also change the focus, to a trapped couatl needing rescue, rather than a ‘smarter-than-you’ being punishing you. That’s just my style.

I am curious if you have general takes on adventure format. On the Ashes of Athas admin team we discussed this often. Are there general changes you would make to the published adventures? What should the sections of an encounter be, and in what order should they appear? When should bold/underline bullets be used or not used?